Working together and gaining trust

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi all,

Sorry for not immediately replying to this discussion. I had a death
in the family which took a lot of (emotional) energy. And then there
was of course the Sourceware hardware refresh cycle to finalize last
week.

But I am happy the emotions seem to have calmed down and the proposal
now technically just amounts to a glibc git branch cleanup, which seem
way less controversial. But these controversial proposals seem to come
back every 9 to 15 months out of nowhere. So we probably should
discuss how to resolve this properly without all the drama. Also
because it eats up lots of energy which distracts from the actual
infrastructure improvements. So I hope the FSF, SFC, OpenSSF and LF
can just sit down and discuss how to efficiently move forward.

Part of the issue seems to be some events five years ago that resulted
in one of the people advocating for closer ties to the LF to start
yelling, screaming and punching people at the Cauldron event. This
obviously didn't improve the discussion back then. And seems to still
cause miscommunication and feelings of bad faith. Lets see if we can
get past that. I don't believe any of that was "against" each other,
just miscommunication and difference in expectations

Also in the last five years Sourceware diversified our hardware
partners and sponsors through grants and individual donations, setup
new services using containers and isolated VMs, investigated secure
supply chain issues and cyber security regulations, added redundant
mirrors, invested in open communication, open office hours and
introduced community oversight by the Sourceware Project Leadership
Committee with the help from the Software Freedom Conservancy

So the discussion is completely different from five years ago.
Ironically Sourceware became so "professional" that some people are
now apparently seeing it as "the other" that might control their
compute. But in reality the Sourceware PLC, overseers and admins are
still just members of the various hosted projects working on our
infrastructure together.

On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 07:58:37AM -0500, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
> On 2026-02-17 06:36, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> >You make it sound like we didn't like the idea of making Sourceware
> >independent from Red Hat or that reaching out to the SFC to setup a
> >proper Sourceware organization was somehow not part of this plan. I
> >believe all overseers (whether they happened to work for Red Hat or
> >not) were initially enthusiastic about the idea to get more resources
> >for Sourceware. We even started making public resource estimates and
> >technical plans [1] [2]. The only detail some of us were worried about
> 
> I don't deny that you didn't dislike the idea of being solely
> dependent on Red Hat for funding but again, you're sharing links
> that simply reinforce my conviction that reaching out to SFC was a
> reaction to disliking the LF IT proposal, which you were made aware
> of much before you let on in these public conversations.  It's
> absolutely OK if it was a reaction, it's fine too if you may have
> had reached out to SFC before or around the time that you got to
> know about the LF IT proposal.  But pretending that you didn't know
> about it until much later is disingenuous and doesn't invoke trust.

This is 5 years ago, so we might misremember the timeline or what was
known to who. All I can say is that I don't remember involving the LF
IT really had been part of any of the discussions. And even if I knew
I wouldn't be against that because I know Konstantine and would have
liked the resources to hire him and working together. We did discuss
setting up Sourceware like kernel.org which also is a non-profit
getting sponsorship money through the LF. Which is why we reached out
to the SFC to help us with that. And it was actually Carlos that
suggested we do that so the community could hold assets and enter into
contracts, etc.

Same with the public resource estimates, technical plans and
presenting about the infrastructure services at Cauldron. We wanted to
let potential sponsors know what the community needed and were working
on. We just wanted to make sure that we had the organization and
community setup to start working with more corporate sponsors if they
would show up. Which I thought the LF plan was all about. So it
certainly wasn't against that. The idea was for us to work together
not against.

> >>>Which is why it is so important that before this CTI plan proceeds the
> >>>FSF as the original fund raising organization for the GNU Toolchain
> >>>signs off on it and makes sure that a clear charter and board that
> >>>works in the interest of the community and guarantees the money is
> >>>spend on Free Software.
> >>
> >>Nope, you're just inventing new governance rules now and creating
> >>friction where none exists.
> >
> >I am not inventing, the friction is already there. The FSF has real
> >issues with this idea [3]. And given that the FSF is legally the
> >steward of the GNU Toolchain it is only professional for the LF to
> >discuss with the FSF if they want to take over some of that to make
> >sure they align on the goals.
> 
> I'm referring to your claim of needing a signoff from the FSF; I
> don't think we need any such signoff since we satisfied their demand
> of not calling it GNU Toolchain Infrastructure.

I don't know if just changing the name suddenly makes it legitimate. I
guess the FSF and the LF will have to have a talk about the conditions
that would make it so.

But my main point really is that as a project we shouldn't just ignore
the FSF or do things they clearly don't agree with. We have a good
working relation now with the FSF and the FSF tech team, they have
paid staff which provides various services for some of our hosted
projects. Lets work together with them. If they point out issues that
concern them then lets make sure we address them together. We aren't
adversaries, we all just want to advance Free Software.

> I think we've addressed all concerns other than the "I don't like
> the LF", which I don't think we can address.  The best we can do is
> invoke our personal currency in the community as individuals in the
> TAC and say that we will ensure that if we're made aware of anything
> that goes against the principles of our community (which implicitly
> includes Free Software principles) we will do whatever it takes to
> remedy that, including moving infrastructure out if needed.

The best you could do is fix the charter and board requirements. It is
the shaky governance that people don't like. The charter doesn't even
talk about Free Software. The board just seems to be about who pays
most and then even decides who may "advise" them. Why not add some
guardrails to the charter by describing what raised money may be used
for. Make sure the board has at least the FSF as a member. It doesn't
have to rely on just "personal currency", you can just put down things
in writing you agree on.

But also the LF and OpenSSF could just work directly with the FSF,
SFC, Sourceware and the project community so we can improve the
infrastructure together.

Cheers,

Mark